concentration camp

noun

: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard

—used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners

The Nazi soldiers hauled [Mordechai] Strigler off to a concentration camp, and carved swastikas into his cheeks and forehead with a razor blade. Over the next five years, he was sent from one concentration camp or slave-labor camp to another.

—David Remnick

She ended up dying in a concentration camp, just a few months before she would have been liberated.

—Marilyn Reynolds

The V2 killed thousands of British civilians while 20,000 concentration camp inmates died as slave labourers during its manufacture in the closing stages of the second world war.

—Anna Tomforde et al.

see also death camp

Examples of concentration camp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The arrival platform at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was a place of unimaginable cruelty. —Lesley Stahl, CBS News, 16 Feb. 2026

Get a close look at more than 400 photos and 500 original artifacts from those who survived and died at the concentration camp. —Caroline Ritzie, Cincinnati Enquirer, 15 Feb. 2026

Firestone visited the Auschwitz concentration camp and met Holocaust survivors during that trip. —Michelle Kaufman, Miami Herald, 10 Feb. 2026

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz recently invoked the name of Anne Frank, the Jewish-German teenager who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after hiding with her family from the Gestapo for two years while living in the Netherlands. —Chris Roemer, Baltimore Sun, 7 Feb. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1901, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for concentration camp

• amp
• champ
• clamp
• cramp
• damp
• gamp
• lamp
• ramp
• samp
• scamp
• stamp
• tamp

Kids Definition

concentration camp

noun

: a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained